Xiaomi is often quick to mimic new features introduced in Android and add them to MIUI, even without bumping the version of Android to the latest. It recently replicated Google’s Digital Wellbeing and anti-probing features for Wi-Fi, and added them to MIUI beta besides also including a floating calculator in stable builds to help users maximize their productivity. Now, with the addition of a customizable clock widget on the lockscreen in Android Q by Google, Xiaomi is adding similar functionality to MIUI 10. Besides the adjustable clock widget, MIUI 10 is also getting better at managing notifications from the lock screen.

MIUI 10 now lets users choose the alignment and the size of the clock on the lock screen. One can choose among the “Centered,” “Left-Aligned,” and “Vertical” orientations of the widget. The screenshot below gives some insight into how the widget appears in different positions.

The other feature added to MIUI 10 will be useful for the management of notification from the lock screen. While until now, you could either completely hide or completely show the contents of the notifications from the lockscreen, the new feature will allow you to peek at contents using face unlock. Once the face unlock mechanism verifies your face, the details in the notifications will become visible so that you decide whether it is worth your attention or not.

Both of these features are now live in the MIUI 10 Developer ROM in China (MIUI 10 9.5.1) on the Xiaomi Mi 9 and their addition to the beta – and then, stable – builds is subject to the feedback from the testers.

Upcoming Home screen swipe gestures & Kid space

We also found some information about the upcoming features in MIUI including some swipe gestures controls and dedicated “Kid space.” During a teardown of the MIUI Home app, we found the following code which helps us speculate the utility of these gestures:

<string name="launcher_pull_down_title">Swipe up on the Home screen</string>
<string name="launcher_slide_up_title">Swipe down on the Home screen</string>
<string name="home_gesture_content_center">Content Center</string>
<string name="home_gesture_global_search">Search</string>
<string name="home_gesture_no_action">None</string>
<string name="home_gesture_notification_bar">Notifications</string>
<string name="home_pull_down_action">Swipe down on the Home screen</string>
<string name="home_slide_up_action">Swipe up on the Home screen</string>

From what it appears, the gesture controls might allow users to perform actions like launching apps, opening the notifications shade, or open a system-wide search by swiping up or down on the home screen of the MIUI launcher.

Before MIUI 9, Xiaomi’s smartphones used to feature a Child Mode which would allow parents to select specific apps suitable their kids and locking the rest away using a pattern or a pin code. Now, the reference about Kid space indicates that the feature may return to MIUI soon, but with a different name. Whether that will happen with MIUI 10 or MIUI 11 is difficult to predict.

Both the features are absent from the latest MIUI 10 nightly but we’ll let you know when we learn more about them.

About Author

Tushar's love for tinkering with different forms of consumer tech brings him to this front. Besides technology, he likes to keep a tab on the political climate and trade bouts that make things expensive, and in turn, peeve him.
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